The National Petrochemical Company (NPC) was established in 1963 with government owning it. It served as subsidiary to the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) initially. It focused on all activities relating to establishing and development of oil industry. Petrochemicals served as the main component of Iranian oil industry. It marked as an important and mother industry in Iran. As an important choice for the non-oil exports, the NPC strives for economic flourishment of the country, while caring for development and indigenization of technology and expansion of the side industries, including the downstream industries or the industries supplying the technical and engineering and research needs of the country. It has taken into consideration fundamental indices and factors, including reliance on the country's advantages in feedstock supply, attention to attraction of foreign capital and resources, while carrying for promotion of national technology, employment and development of the downstream sector and lifting up the standing of the Iranian petrochemical industry both in the region and the world through relative increase in volume and value of the production as the key to sustainable development. These all have been in proportion with the country's strategic and master plan for development of the country's petrochemical industry, which has been in force since 1997.

In the course of the country's development plans, the NPC has been trying to its best to gain superior standing and make maximum use of the country's comparative advantages to have more effective presence in the region and the world. The symbol of such a presence is change in the economic variables and indexes like production, exports, investment, value-added and share in the national production, regional contributions and expansion of the target markets for the exports.

With implementation of the Article 44 of the Constitution and extensive privatizations in the petrochemical industry, the NPC has turned into the policy maker and custodian of development, designing the development programs and facilitating their well implementation and preparing conditions for coming and activity of the private sector. The sector has been active in implementation of the development projects in the petrochemical industry, being in charge of such measures as making high investment and enduring related risks.

The Iranian petrochemical industry development road map points to increasing level of production by the current petrochemical facilities to their nominal production capacity; implementation and completion of the half-finished projects remaining from the fourth and fifth five-year plans; implementation of new projects; and preparing the ground for balanced development of the downstream petrochemical industries with an aim to complete the value chain (per the law on oil and in cooperation with the Ministry of Industries, Mines and Trade).

Based on the devised plans, the petrochemical production capacity should reach 50 million tons by end of the year 1395 (to end on March 20, 2017) and that of exports to 20 million tons.

By 2025, the NPC targets achieving top position in the region in terms of petrochemical production and value of the new projects implemented.